1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a surveillance system and method based on accumulated features of an object, and more particularly, to a surveillance system and method based on accumulated features of an object which can monitor a wide area by accumulatively storing features of a specific object with various types of cameras and performing surveillance continuously and interactively on the basis of the features.
2. Description of the Related Art
With development of various types of video equipment, an intellectual surveillance system that identifies and traces an object on the basis of the features of the object, which are detected by video equipment, and monitors an event due to movement of the identified object.
Most of existing surveillance systems, which have been developed to identify objects in fixed areas, are configured to extract features of an object in an image taken by a single camera and identify the same object.
However, according to this configuration, the feature information of an object identified in accordance with specifications and surveillance environment including resolution, an angle, and a color tone of a single camera is difficult to use with another type of camera with different specifications and surveillance environment, so it is impossible to determine whether the object photographed by another camera is the same as the object photographed by the single camera, which causes discontinuation in object tracing.
Accordingly, in recent surveillance systems, the surveillance areas of different cameras partially overlap, and when an object detected first by a camera enters an overlap area, the position of the object is shared by other cameras and whether the object is the same as an object identified in an image taken by another camera is determined, thereby keeping tracing the object.
However, according to this configuration, the same types of cameras are used and the surveillance environments and specifications of the cameras should be matched, so the cameras are difficult to be compatible with other cameras, and accordingly, discontinuation is generated in the process of tracing an object, similar to the existing systems.
Further, there is a need for overlap surveillance areas to share the position of an object among cameras, so the surveillance areas are limited and a surveillance system equipped with those cameras has very low efficiency.